A COUNCIL leader hit out at fellow councillors for a flurry of "angry" emails that followed Clacton MP Douglas Carswell quitting UKIP.

Tendring Council leader Neil Stock scolded councillors for getting over excited by Mr Carswell’s choice to leave the party to become an independent MP last week.

Mr Stock said: “I was less than impressed with the large number of emails that populated my official Tendring Council inbox– sent from councillors to all other councillors, and sometimes including an even wider audience as well.

“I might be tempted to remind members that we have all agreed to certain standards of behaviour and maybe some members might be well-advised to refresh their memory as to what those obligations and duties are.

“I can understand the excitement surrounding the shenanigans of Mr Carswell, but I really didn’t need to be copied in on all those angry little messages.

“But what concerned me much more disturbingly though was the email that was savagely critical of the police, and with a recipient list that even included senior police officers, sent out let us not forget, just two days after the police lost one of their own in the line of duty, protecting the very heart of our democratic institutions at Westminster.

"If we want to challenge or question policing in Tendring or anywhere else there are ways and means of doing it, but we do not publicly bash the very men and women who put on the uniform to protect and serve, on behalf of us all, and in so doing immediately make themselves a target.

“We can attack the government for its policies or its funding of the police, we can criticise the Home Secretary or the Minister for Policing and these days of course we can even call to account the Essex Police and Crime Commissioner – and as a council we have done."

"But we must never seek to undermine the serving officers of Essex Police."